This story wasn’t my idea, you know. It was the heroine, Aurelia’s. If Robert’s and her trilogy had been my idea, I would never have made it past the third chapter in the first book. Much less along the high, narrow trail across the Gate.

But Aurelia is driven.

She is the one who insisted her first novel, Aurelia, was worth telling and having published. She is the one who insisted, the sequel, Exile, was imperative, and that I darn well couldn’t leave her in the forest. And she is the one who has seen this trilogy to completion, with Redemption.

Through every challenge.

To name only a handful of a far more extensive list:

-Doubt.

-Rumor.

-Battle strategy.

-Taking out practically every sentence to determine whether each one deserved to go back in.

-Figuring out the frigging ending. Aurelia, Robert, and I knew the ending all along. But getting it to feel like our ending—that took some serious work.

-Wrapping up all the wildly spread threads that we had conveniently unraveled throughout the entire first two books.

-Climbing the Gate. Again.

-Robert and his cursed guilt.

-Tolerating a rather high-maintenance horse.

-We even forced ourselves to climb into the head of the villain. A very unpleasant place. I don’t like being there.

-Deciding who lives & who dies. At least one character made it through two revisions before keeling off right in the middle of the climax.

Anyone who tells you that completing a trilogy is easy is possibly a very stubborn heroine with an agenda all her own.

But, you know, it’s amazing.

Because, after all of those challenges, Redemption is absolutely the conclusion of my dreams.